Home > Blog > How to Spot a High-Quality Paint by Numbers Kit
What this guide covers: The five things that separate a genuinely good paint by numbers kit from one that looks fine in photos but frustrates you the moment you open it. Canvas material, paint quality, brushes, design conversion, and kit completeness — with specific things to look for and red flags to avoid.
Written by William Murdock, founder of Paint On Numbers Canada and someone who has opened and tested more kits than I care to count.
The paint by numbers market has exploded over the last few years and honestly the range in quality is enormous. You can spend $35 on a kit that paints beautifully and produces something you genuinely want to frame, or you can spend $20 on something that arrives with watery paints, blurry numbers, and a canvas so thin it wrinkles under the first brushstroke. The box art on both of them looks basically the same.
After founding Paint On Numbers and testing more kits than I care to remember, I have developed a pretty reliable checklist for spotting quality before you buy. These are the five things I actually look at, in the order that matters most.
The five quality signals
1. The canvas
The canvas is the single most important quality factor in a paint by numbers kit, and it is also where the biggest differences between price points show up. A good canvas makes painting feel like painting. A bad one makes it feel like you are trying to colour on a paper bag.
What you want is a linen-blend canvas that has been pre-primed with gesso. The gesso layer is the key detail here. It creates a slight tooth on the surface that gives the paint something to grip, keeps the colours from soaking straight into the fabric and going dull, and produces the kind of smooth, even finish that makes a completed kit look like actual artwork rather than a craft project.
The printing matters just as much. The numbers and section outlines need to be crisp and dark enough to read clearly, but not so heavy that they show through even after two coats of paint. Blurry or faint printing is one of the most common signs of a low-quality kit and it will frustrate you from the very first session. If the lines are unclear before you start painting, they will be impossible to work with once you have paint on your brush and need to make quick decisions about which tiny section belongs to which colour.
Canvas thickness is something people underestimate until they have experienced a thin one. A thin canvas wrinkles when it gets wet from the paint, creating ripples and uneven surfaces that are genuinely difficult to paint over neatly. If your canvas arrives rolled and has fold lines from shipping, read our guide on how to remove canvas creases before you start.
| Canvas quality check | Premium kit | Budget kit |
|---|---|---|
| Material | Linen or linen-cotton blend | Thin cotton or synthetic |
| Priming | Pre-primed with gesso | Unprimed or lightly coated |
| Number printing | Crisp, clear, legible | Blurry, faint, or bleeding |
| Behaviour when wet | Stays flat and stable | Warps and wrinkles |
2. The paints
This is where cheap kits cut corners most aggressively, and where the difference in your experience is most noticeable. The paints in a quality kit should be pre-mixed, water-based acrylics with enough pigment concentration that you get solid coverage in one or two coats. They should have a creamy, smooth consistency straight from the pot — not watery, not thick as paste, but somewhere in the middle that flows off a brush cleanly.
Watery paints are the most common complaint about budget kits. They look fine in photos of the pot but the moment you apply them to canvas they are semi-transparent, meaning you can see the printed numbers underneath even after multiple coats. This leads to the most frustrating paint by numbers experience there is: section after section looking faded and unfinished no matter how many times you go over it.
The colour matching matters too. In a well-designed kit the paints are matched specifically to the design, so the colour in pot number 7 actually matches what you see in that section of the reference image. Budget kits sometimes use generic colour sets where the match is approximate at best, which means your finished painting looks noticeably different from the design on the box.
All paints should be certified non-toxic and water-based. This matters for families with children who might be painting nearby, and it also makes cleanup straightforward since everything washes off with water before it dries. If a kit does not specify non-toxic acrylics, that is a red flag.
If your paints arrive dried out or thicken during a long session, a single drop of distilled water mixed in is usually all you need to restore the right consistency. Our detailed guide on how to revive dried acrylic paint covers every scenario if you need more help.
3. The brushes
Brushes get overlooked more than almost anything else when people are evaluating a kit, but they have a significant effect on both the process and the result. A kit that comes with one generic medium brush is asking you to paint tiny numbered sections with the same tool you use on large sky backgrounds, which does not work well for either.
A quality kit includes at least three brush sizes. A wide flat brush for large background sections where you want to cover ground quickly and evenly. A medium brush for mid-sized sections that make up most of the painting. A fine detail brush for the small and intricate sections that require precision. Using the right brush for each type of section makes the painting process dramatically easier and produces a cleaner result.
The bristles should be nylon and should not shed. Bristle shedding into wet paint is one of the most irritating experiences in any painting project, and it is a clear sign the brushes were made as cheaply as possible. Quality nylon bristles hold their shape across multiple sessions and clean easily under running water between colour changes.
If you find yourself wanting more control than your included brushes provide, a dedicated set of precision brushes makes a noticeable difference, particularly on detailed designs with a lot of small sections. Our complete guide to paint by numbers brushes covers cleaning, care, and technique in more detail.
4. The design conversion
This one is invisible until you actually try to paint the kit, which is exactly why it catches people out. Design conversion is the process of turning an image into a numbered canvas, and the quality of that conversion has an enormous effect on how enjoyable and how accurate the final painting is.
Budget kits and overseas marketplace kits almost always use fully automated software for this step. The algorithm assigns sections and numbers based on pixel clusters, which sounds fine in principle but in practice produces canvases that are confusing to paint, have sections that do not make visual sense when isolated, and often lose the most important details of the original image entirely. If you have ever seen a paint by numbers photo where the face looks unrecognisable once painted, poor design conversion is usually why.
The gold standard is human review. A designer who looks at the automated output and refines it, makes sure the most important elements of the image are clearly defined, adjusts any sections that the algorithm has made unnecessarily complicated, and checks that the final colour palette actually captures the look and feel of the original photo. This step is what makes the difference between a finished painting that looks like a convincing version of your photo and one that vaguely resembles it.
This matters most for custom kits made from your own photos. When you are turning a picture of your dog or your wedding day into a painting, the design conversion quality is the difference between a kit you are excited to paint and one that produces a result you are disappointed in. Every custom kit we produce at Paint On Numbers goes through human review for exactly this reason.
5. Kit completeness
A thoughtful kit includes everything you need to get from opening the box to a finished painting without having to source anything additional. This sounds obvious but surprisingly many kits fall short on one or two things that end up mattering more than you expect.
The essentials are the numbered canvas, the full set of matched paint pots, and three brush sizes as discussed above. Beyond those, a printed reference image of the finished design is genuinely useful. Having a small colour copy of what your painting should look like means you can check your progress at any point and see what the finished piece is supposed to look like before you paint sections you are unsure about.
Framing options are worth considering before you buy. Some kits include a stretched-on-frame option where the canvas arrives already mounted, which means you are working on a rigid surface and the finished piece can go straight on the wall. Others include a DIY stretcher bar kit. The most important thing is that the kit is clear about what framing format you are getting, so you are not surprised when it arrives. Our guide on no frame vs DIY frame vs stretched on frame explains the differences so you can choose the right option before ordering.
How kits compare side by side
Here is everything above pulled into a single reference table so you can use it as a quick checklist when evaluating any kit.
| Quality factor | Premium kit | Budget kit |
|---|---|---|
| Canvas | Linen blend, gesso-primed, crisp printing | Thin cotton, unprimed, blurry numbers |
| Paints | Pigment-rich pre-mixed acrylics, non-toxic | Watery, semi-transparent, poor coverage |
| Brushes | Three sizes, quality nylon, no shedding | One cheap brush, bristle shedding |
| Design conversion | Human-reviewed, clear sections, accurate colours | Fully automated, confusing sections, colour drift |
| Reference image | Printed colour reference included | Not included or digital only |
| Framing options | Rolled, DIY frame, or pre-stretched options | Rolled only, no framing support |
Ready to find a kit that checks every box?
Browse our full range of adult kits and custom options. Every Paint On Numbers kit uses linen-blend canvas, pre-mixed non-toxic acrylics, three brush sizes, and a printed reference image. Custom kits go through human design review before printing.
Common questions
Written by William Murdock
Founder of Paint On Numbers Canada. William has tested and evaluated paint by numbers kits from dozens of suppliers and believes that understanding what makes a kit good is the first step to actually enjoying the process.
The bottom line
A good paint by numbers kit feels like a genuine creative experience. A poor one feels like a chore. The difference almost always comes down to these five things: the canvas quality, the paint pigmentation, the brush set, how carefully the design was converted, and whether everything you need is actually in the box.
None of these things are hard to check once you know what to look for. Use this as your checklist the next time you are choosing a kit, and you will save yourself the frustration of opening something that looked great online and turned out to be a disappointment. Browse our best-selling kits if you want to see what all five of these signals look like in practice.
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